David Bowie in New York

In 2002, as he prepared to release his latest album, David Bowie met BBC Radio 4’s John Wilson in a rehearsal room in New York City.

Over the course of an extraordinarily candid conversation, Bowie revealed his creative processes and inspirations behind some of his best loved albums. He looked back at how he created alter-ego characters, including Ziggy Stardust, through which he explored recurring themes in his work. “It’s all despondency, despair, fear, isolation, abandonment”, Bowie admitted. And he explained how the spaceship motif that often travelled through his songs was “an interior dialogue manifested physically .. it’s my own little space writ large”.

David Bowie, speaking just months after the 9/11 attacks on New York, also revealed how he had been seeking solace in spirituality as the prospect of death was weighing heavily on his mind.

Presented and produced by John Wilson